49ers’ hiring of Katie Sowers adds to a Bay Area legacy

San Francisco 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers players run through drills during practice at the San Francisco 49ers training facility on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, in Santa Clara, California. Sowers, 31, made more history, becoming the NFL's first openly gay coach. San Francisco 49ers officially hired Katie Sowers for the 2017 season last week, making her the team's first female assistant coach. less

San Francisco 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers players run through drills during practice at the San Francisco 49ers training facility on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, in Santa Clara, California. Sowers, 31, ... more

Photo: Tony Avelar, Special To The Chronicle

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Katie Sowers is a former Bill Walsh coaching fellow who earned a full-time job on the 49ers’ staff.

Katie Sowers is a former Bill Walsh coaching fellow who earned a full-time job on the 49ers’ staff.

Photo: Tony Avelar, Special To The Chronicle

49ers’ hiring of Katie Sowers adds to a Bay Area legacy

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The 49ers hired a female assistant coach who is a lesbian.

Or, as the news was circulated this week at Bay Area water coolers, beauty parlors and barber shops, “The 49ers hired another assistant coach.”

While some people in other parts of the country began fretting, 49ers fans began hoping Katie Sowers will help bring some life to the team’s pass-receiving corps, which she will help coach.

OK, this is a bit of exaggeration. Sowers’ hiring was noted around the Bay Area as a nice milestone, another chip in the big ol’ wall of prejudice and misunderstanding that we like to think we’re kicking at every day.

Sowers presented the Bay Area another opportunity to give itself a subtle pat on the back.

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And somewhere, Bill Walsh and Al Davis heard the news and lit up a couple of big cigars.

Sowers’ new job can be placed on a thread that runs through Bay Area sports. Here’s one strand of that thread:

Davis — who hired the NFL’s first black coach of the modern era and employed the highest-ranking female exec in sports, gave Walsh his first NFL coaching job in 1966, as Raiders running backs coach. The two men shared a lot of philosophical talk.

Walsh, when he was coach of the 49ers, created the Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Fellowship, to mentor and develop minority coaches. Every year, about 130 minority coaches get their foot in the door through the fellowship. Three current NFL head coaches are products of Walsh’s fellowship program.

Sowers came to her current position through Walsh’s program. She was hired as a coaching intern by Falcons assistant general manager Scott Pioli, who mentored Sowers. Pioli is on the advisory council of the Walsh Fellowship.

Kyle Shanahan was the Falcons’ offensive coordinator last season, and when he got the 49ers’ head coaching job, he brought in Sowers as an intern on the Walsh program, giving her a platform from which she earned her way into a full-time job.

Token hire? Shanahan and general manager John Lynch are NFL rookies at their jobs, very much under the microscope, so they don’t have the luxury of social experimentation. You can be sure Sowers earned her new job on merit.

“If anybody knows me, (her sexual orientation) has nothing to do with why I would ever make a decision like that. I’m provably the opposite of that,” said Shanahan at team headquarters Wednesday. “It’s very simple. ... She gets along well with the players, the receivers room. The receivers respect her.”

Sowers isn’t the first female full-time assistant coach in the NFL. Kathryn Smith nailed down that honor with the Bills last season. But Sowers is the first openly lesbian female NFL coach.

Smith, by the way, earned another distinction: first female to be fired as an NFL assistant coach. When the Bills changed head coaches, Smith was not retained. However, this year the Bills brought Phoebe Schecter to camp as an intern on a Walsh Fellowship. Four of the Bills’ current assistant coaches are black men who came through the Walsh Fellowship program.

The Bay Area influence spreads like a positive plague. Here’s another piece of the Bay Area thread: Gregg Popovich, coach of the San Antonio Spurs, got his NBA coaching start under Warriors then-coach Don Nelson, and Popovich still calls the Bay Area his part-time home.

Three years ago, Popovich hired Becky Hammon as the NBA’s first full-time female assistant coach.

When any racial or gender barrier is broken down, it invariably comes after decades of claims by the people who make the hiring decisions that they are color-blind, or gender-blind.

What that seems to mean is that they can’t see black men, or they can’t see women.

People like Davis, Walsh, and now Shanahan and Lynch, know that blindness is blindness. Progress and breakthroughs come when a person in power opens his eyes.